Flying Island

First to Arrive Ivy Tech John Waldron Arts Center/Bloomington, IN by Roger Pfingston First to arrive, he sits listening to the building, the irregular ticks and hums, the occasional snap like something contracting under winter’s grip on this June night. It feels good, this aloneness with warped wood floors, limestone walls. He begins to take on a kind of ownership, as if he could be where he wants when he wants in this building, huge with friendly indifference, letting him sit and be at the top of the stairs, no voice but his outside the dark room that becomes whatever others need it to be, Terpsichore being tonight’s honored guest. Bio : A retired teacher of English and photography, Roger Pfingston is the recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and two PEN Syndicated Fiction Awards. He has poems in recent issues of Poet Lore, Spoon River Poetry Review, Innisfree P...

Kroger, Bloomington IN (August 2015) by Hiromi Yoshida Bike rush to Kroger— in my employee-discounted Indiana University fitness leggings and Target sports bra—for $4.99 Barefoot Pinot Grigio and possibly sushi (only if 1 pkg costs less than $6.00)—culminated in braking @ the bike rack before a window glass reflection that was narcissistically pleasing — wind blowing long fine hair in one direction—freshly shampooed and conditioned with Matrix Biolage hair care products, styled by Connie @ Perfect Illusion—I felt like a supermodel (despite my XS petite size)—the sun and the wind and my strength merging and coursing through my caffeine-fueled body in one powerful surge—pulsating outwardly from sun-saturated bodywashed pores… Directly juxtaposed with this glass reflection just around the redbrick corner with the sign reading: “ No Loitering Or Panhandling” solidly stood a woman with chunky ankles, askew skirts, wispy faded hair pulled back in a sl...

The Rabbit by Hiromi Yoshida How did the rabbit cease to be just a rabbit? After all, it wasn’t pulled out of some spuriously glittering magician’s hat to begin with. Instead, it evolved into a furry little carcass on the sidewalk of E. Atwater Ave. across from my house—speckled with buzzing flies in the noonday sun. It then became a sooty viscous mess—oozing blood and stench in 90° F heat, an environmental hazard for the City of Bloomington’s sanitation department to clean up. By the third day since its discovery, (possibly) it had melted into the sidewalk—an elongated black pancake of visceral goo (surely, I was disinclined to confirm its decomposition status despite my intensely voyeuristic curiosity). By day five or six, (possibly) it was a dark viscous stain like treacle or molasses— or a sticky shadow etched upon the sidewalk—in either case, a hairy fur...

Furrows by Doris Lynch "The plowers plowed…they made long their furrows."   Psalm 129:3 Where will I sleep in the furrows of death? Will I find a dove willing to pillow my cheek against its soft down? If only the sun-patterned grasses might curry my bare arms and legs. This burrow, this shaped hummock, will it provide a clear view of sky? What of those clouds racing past-- are they too fleet for shrouds? Where will I sleep in the furrows of death? What will I cling to? Root, barnacle, rock face? Piercing the hard soil, will clods of earth block my passage? Will my body find its way? Find sanctuary, shelter? Doris Lynch has work recently in the Tipton Poetry Review, the Atlanta Review, Frogpond, Ha...

The Farm Wife, a poem by Shari Wagner The farm wife describes meeting her husband at a “walk-a-mile”—a Mennonite dating game The last light was touching the tassels when the quiet boy from Emma Church tapped the guy with his eye on college and told him to move forward five couples. That’s how I met Pete. From the soft way he scuffed the gravel and whistled to a red-winged blackbird, I could tell he wasn’t the sort to shoot the starlings or tell me how to keep my house. Not like the boys who talked to be talking and walked so close they almost pushed me in the ditch. When Lu Miller told me, “ Move back nine,” I did with regret but tagged her back when the next girl said, “ Go forward four,” and I added five. It was cheating, but that’s how you knew someone liked you—when they came back. At Fly Creek, cicadas were clicking and swallows brushed the darkness with their wings. Or maybe they were bats. ...

Buckskin, Indiana by Roger Pfingston Back home after walking the creek, he sits with toast and a mug of coffee, savoring               a blue                          heron morning:  how it lifted at his approach, leading him on, indulging his presence with a slow wing spread, the short repeated flights to the water’s edge, until he turned back, the heron knowing more than he could follow, the window now, framing the steady gaze, the fenced-in beauty of horses. Bio : A retired teacher of English and photography, Roger Pfingston is the recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and two PEN Syndicated Fiction Awards. He has poems in recent issues of Poet Lore, Spoon River Poetry Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, and U.S. 1 Worksheets. New poems are scheduled to appear in Poetry East a...

Any Place Called Home by Rosemary Freedman Once, driving to my childhood home, I looked around at the old neighborhood and I felt ashamed. My mother, who had raised seven children, was alone in her back room the wallpaper peeling away, and because she had been successful at making successful children, I asked- "Why do you stay here?" "This is my home where I've lived for fifty years. This is where I feel comfortable," she answered. Then I imagined, children in huts, children in trailers, in doubles, in projects, in caves. Any place called home- We share the same sky- and the same sun. Suddenly I became a little girl playing in the rain with these other children from all of these other places. Our toothless smiles faced the sky, reluctant all - to come in from this Baptism spontaneous. Our laughter blending like a symphony With arms outstretched to a God that washed us all with the same water...

The house next door was lifeless until yesterday when I saw a family of raccoons. The old man and his skinny dog who lived there before-- left without closing the front door and no one has seen them since. A fellow across the street who wears thick glasses swears he saw the old man in the Walmart Parking Lot on Main Street the rainy night the door was left wide open. He was singing loudly pushing a cart filled with cases of dog food. The paper boy says he’s owed five months delivery and the mail lady says she can’t put any more mail in the box and oh, by the way, someone should return the checks sent the old man from Social Security. – by T.D. Richards From T.D. Richards: “After a career in corrections, Tom Richards began taking poetry classes at the Indiana Writers Center. In 2013, he published a collection of poems, This Side and That . He lives in central Indiana with his wife.”

Musty Nuts & Bolts By Rudy Schouten What I can remember of being six years old feels random, but I suppose young predilections have a say in it, too. Trips to the hardware store with my father were among the recollections that managed to stick. They were staples in a stellar childhood, the early years of an upbringing in a big family that merged fun at home with a handyman’s insistence on drawing his children into his work. That meant home life would always favor doing things over having them. All that family togetherness kept us busy and relatively undistracted by what other people had or did, so I wasn’t so much fully aware of being happy as recalling very little to be unhappy about.       The runs to the hardware store were part of all that—outings with your father to a place coincidentally perfect for reinforcing a few family ethics …  e arn your keep, learn to use your hands, and try to figure things out for yourself. Those were the practica...